


A Bunch of Us  Or, Gand Candy

by executrix



Category: Blakes7, Buffy the Vampire Slayer
Genre: Crossover, F/M, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2011-04-30
Updated: 2011-04-30
Packaged: 2017-10-18 20:17:59
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 7,034
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/192882
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/executrix/pseuds/executrix
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>History is written by the victors, so it takes a certain amount of nerve for the Liberator crew to use their Chronoport Bracelets to go to Sunnydale and confront its fearsome dictator. What they didn't count on was the candy.</p>
            </blockquote>





	A Bunch of Us  Or, Gand Candy

FAITH: _Want. Take. Have_. (Bad Girls)

GILES: _It's devastating. He's turned into a sixteen-year-old boy.  
Of course, you'll have to kill him_. (The Pack)

(The Liberator)  
+I can call spirits from the vasty deep+ Orac said smugly.

"Why, so can I and so can any man," Avon said. "But will they come when you do call them?"

+I know you have all attributed my discomfiture at being interrupted to sheer ill-temper,+ Orac said. +But many of my most significant researches have been hermetic in nature, thus explaining my powers of prognostication. What you all fail to understand--one of your numerous failures of comprehension--is the danger of interruption to a deep session of occult research. You have been very lucky that no misfortunes have occurred for this reason."

"Very lucky?" Vila murmured from the Peanut Gallery. "Is that what you'd call it?"

+In the extremely limited intervals of uninterrupted work that I have been permitted, I have also worked out the schematics for mechanical implementation of Fourth Dimension access devices.+

"Oi?" Vila asked.

Avon stared down at Orac, feeling more surprise--and more excitement--than he had felt in a very long time. "Chronoport bracelets," he said.

(The Liberator)

Even with the schematics available, it took a while for Avon to create working prototypes. There was only one sentient entity available for testing that could be spared in case of system problems. Cally didn't take the appropriation of her Moondisk in very good part--it was worse than testing shampoo by pouring it into the eyes of rabbits. The Moondisk came back on schedule, without registering any complaints, so the bracelets went into full production.

Blake called a plenary session to explain the next mission. "Earth. Late twentieth century. Northern Hemisphere."

Vila sighed histrionically. "What are we blowing up this time, the Federation Constitutional Convention, stop them from signing the Declaration of Submission?"

"No, Vila, you'll be glad to know that the mission strategy does not involve any blowing up."

"What, then?" Jenna asked.

"A simple deal."

"With?" Jenna asked.

"The demon Lurconis."

Blake waited for the rhubarb to subside.

"Blake, you were in over your head with the Terra Nostra, and this is simply an additional order of magnitude more foolish..."

There's Avon at silly mid-on again, Gan thought. Doesn't he know that Blake won't pay him a blind bit of notice when he's got his heart set on something? The rest of us may like Galactic Monopoly, but for those two, it's Squabble every time. In the interval of observing Avon not pay a blind bit of notice to Blake not paying a blind bit of notice to him, Gan pondered what to do.

"According to Orac's invaluable researches," Blake began.

"Which have landed us right in it over and over again," Vila said, "So I wouldn't worry myself all that much about 'em."

"...Lurconis is a demon particularly concerned with political matters, and therefore peculiarly qualified to assist us in defeating the Federation. To date, our conventional efforts have not been crowned with the success we would like. Although I must admit that a demon would not be my first choice of ally, let's remember what Churchill said..."

Jenna raised her eyebrows.

"Oh, you know," Vila stage-whispered. "The chap with the blankets."

" 'If Hitler invaded Hell, I would make at least a favorable reference to the Devil in the House of Commons,' " Blake said. "Now, we have a fix on where Lurconis can be found, and with our new technology, it should be a simple enough matter to contact him and press our case."

"Blake, what've we got that a demon wants?" Vila asked. "I mean, we've got loads of money and that, but if a demon is going to spend money instead of just taking things, then it can conjure up its own money, can't it?"

"Oh, I'm sure we can think of something," Blake said, his eyes fixed on the bright horizon of a better day.  
Avon looked at him, horrified. He, too, had read the story of the Countess Cathleen, selling her soul to buy bread for her starving peasants.

Trust Blake to get a Yeats infection at a time like this.

(Sunnydale High)

"It's band candy," Principal Snyder said. "You will all be held responsible for selling it to raise money for band uniforms. Forty bars apiece. The retail price is $1.25 per bar, and, insofar as the SATs are later this week, I'm sure you all know how much that comes to."

"You know what happens when you asuuuuuume," Xander said. "We all went to public school."

"Oh, for Armani's sake," Cordelia said, taking a fifty-dollar bill out of her Gucci wallet and handing it to the haplessly flustered school secretary. "Take mine and give them to the homeless. Nobody I know eats those kind of carbs."

(The Liberator)

Gan hauled Orac over to the teleport bay, and paused, writing stick at the ready. If anybody noticed (and, he was inclined to think, they wouldn't notice if he embarked on a nude cancan on top of the Force Wall console), he could say that he was buckling down to another of those difficult Primary Astrogation lessons.

"Now, then, Orac," he said. "Tell me a bit more about why you chose that time and place for the rendezvous with the demon Lurconis."

Orac's internal lights flashed in chortle-mode. +It's a good space-time coordinate to contact Lurconis....insofar as the planet is Earth, you will not need life support, you will be familiar with the gravity, and insofar as it is the early twenty-first century, your clothing will pass without comment and despite some differences of idiom and accent--and you'll have to talk bloody fast--your speech and theirs will be mutually comprehensible. Odd, that, given the millennium or so of difference, but there it is.+

Gan thought this over. About an hour later, he said, "Orac, what did you mean about talking bloody fast?"

+I'm glad somebody can be arsed to listen to me...+ Orac began.

(The Liberator)

"Good, now that we're all agreed, let's set off," Blake said. "Avon, Cally..."

"I'll come along," Gan said, with a degree of finality. "Cally will stay here."  
"I called for Cally because a telepath might be handy in a strange environment. Anyway, because The Slayer and many of secret police, the Scooby Gang, manifest themselves in the form of young women, Cally might be able to disarm suspicion and slip among them."

Gan had to admit that The Slayer, Sunnydale's fearsome dictator, did sound even more frightening than Servalan, but he had also seen some of the images displayed by Orac, and he couldn't detect any real evil in Buffy's face. He was also aware of the tendency of stories to become exaggerated even over a short span of time, and the distortions caused by history being written by the winners. And as anyone--including his Cousin Tiny--could tell you, there are often elements of metaphor or even whimsy in the assignment of names.

"I'll come along," Gan reiterated, increasing the level of finality. "Cally will stay here."

"Right, then," Blake said. "Avon, what are you waiting for? We've got to get there before the Gathering, you know."

(A Street Corner in Sunnydale)

"Very well, now that we're here, what do we do--paint ourselves blue and chant until the demon appears?" Avon said.

"We've had plenty of missions that involved developing local knowledge," Blake said, a bit huffily. He unrolled the acetate with Orac's map. "There's a Library just here," he said, gesturing. "No doubt there'll be quite a few armed guards, but that's nothing new for us, is it?"

The Library was about half a kilometer away, and they beguiled the walk by looking overhead to see how high up the Dome was and nearly getting flattened by the unexpected deluge of Personal Transportation.

"It should be just round the corner here," Blake said, and they all tensed at the prospect of fighting their way in to the no-doubt-heavily fortified repository of knowledge, most of which was bound to be classified.

(The Sunnydale Public Library)

"Welcome!" said the posters splashed over the front of the bungalow-styled Sunnydale Public Library. Somewhat abashed, they entered the main room.

A plump young woman sat at a desk. "Jesus!" she said. "Three at once! Can't remember the last time that happened...I'm beginning to think we'll have to start selling mochaccinos to get anybody into this mausoleum."

"Well, this looks to be easier than I thought," Blake said. He gestured toward Avon. "Why don't you see if you can get a line on this Ethan Rayne, and I'll..."

"I'll pay a visit to...to Ms. Summers," Gan said, unsuccessfully essaying a menacing leer.

Blake was a little taken aback. "Yes, she may be evil, but after all, she's just a girl..."

"Don't worry," Gan said. "It's more of a watching brief. I'll keep an eye on the girl--and, after all, I couldn't harm her much even if I tried." He headed off toward the address helpfully supplied by Orac.

Avon walked up to the desk, and said, "City Directory?" to the librarian. She pointed him in the direction of a shelf of reference books, and handed him a bit of paper (from a torn-up flyer for last week's senior citizen movie) and a very small graphite writing stick.

Blake, in his turn, approached the desk. "I need information about a...well, I suppose you'd say a local event, called The Gathering, scheduled for today, and I'd welcome some contact information for...its impresario, shall we say. Lurconis."

"Damn!" the librarian said. "We used to have Demon Google, well, we would around here, but budget cuts, yadda, yadda, yadda. Go over to the High School--turn right at the entrance, five blocks, turn left at the BMW Dealership, go three blocks. Ask for Rupert and say that Larissa sent you."

(A Street in Sunnydale)

A tenth-grader, huddled in a huge down jacket that was rendered tolerable in the California climate only by its momentary modishness, walked up to Blake and opened the lid of the cardboard box. "Hi, mister, do you want to buy some candy? They make us sell it to buy stuff for the school band."

The communicator on the chronoport bracelet glowed and hummed.

"Cool!" the boy said. "Wearable cellies! Can you text on it?"

Right, Blake thought. {{So much for mutual comprehensibility.}} Blake looked down into the box. It was packed with long shiny packets labeled "Milkbar" and "Cocorific." He sniffed..."candy" must mean "sweets."

"Oh, all right," he said. "How much does it cost?"

"Buck and a quarter each," the boy said. Blake started to reach for the unfamiliar notes and coins in his pocket when someone came out of a nearby shop and walked toward them.

Blake turned on his heel and fled, unwilling to be seen with sweets changing hands between himself and a strange child.

As soon as he was alone, he returned the page. "Hullo, Jenna, everything seems to be all right so far. We'll call in in an hour."

(The Sunnydale High Library)  
Bloody hell, Giles thought. They pay me little enough without having to pass it back to them. He unlocked the book cage, opened the safe, and put the sixth chocolate bar inside, joining the other five. He'd bought three bars from Buffy, two from Willow, and, his patience rapidly reaching exhaustion, one from Xander.

He gave him abdomen a grim, minatory pat. Middle-aged spread had encroached far too much already, pity there was no such thing as a receding waistline. It was hard to continue to feel youthful not only marooned in Southern California, that museum of fossilized and uninteresting beauty, but in a literal high school crammed with youths at their peak of unspoiled freshness. The minoxidil appeared to do no good at all, about as much use as using toad eyes to cure dropsy.

Any fool knew that you used axolotl spleen for that.

(1630 Revello Drive)

"Ms. Summers?" Gan asked courteously. "Is the younger--the other--Ms. Summers at home?" He looked around for a silver tray on which to place his calling card, but then after all he didn't have a calling card. "Ms. Summers--please sit down, I don't want to startle you--I have something to say that you will find hard to believe. My comrades and I have arrived here on a spaceship..."

"Makes a nice change," Joyce said. "Usually it's vampires, then there was a mask, some demons...smashed up the house like you wouldn't believe."

"Oh!" Gan said, a little deflated by the turn of events. "Well, there is a demon in the case...we're looking for a demon named Lurconis, and I've been told by a usually--oh, well, occasionally--reliable source--that Ms. Buffy is going to kill him. Errr...this is somewhat delicate..."

"Would you like some hot chocolate?" Joyce asked.

"Thank you, that would be very kind." There was at least one nice thing about any world in which ordinary people could indulge in chocolate so casually.

Joyce took a couple of mugs out of the dishwasher, and reached into the box of hot chocolate mix. In a cacao version of the wheel turning but the hamster being gone, the box was in the cupboard but there was nothing in it. Joyce started to sigh, then realized that it would indeed be an uneventful week in which that was the most upsetting thing Buffy had done.

Joyce was glad that she wouldn't have to disappoint her guest by taking back the offer. She broke up a couple of her allotment of chocolate bars, divided the pieces between the two mugs, added a splash of milk, and popped the mugs into the microwave. While she waited for the chocolate to melt, she found that there were at least enough miniature marshmallows left in the bag to sprinkle over the two cups.

"It's a peculiar situation," Gan began again, once he had a chance to sample the simmering brew. "Because, well, I'm acting rather as a double agent in this matter. I came here with my captain--Blake is his name, Roj Blake--and although he's a good man and has the right objective overall, sometimes his choice of means can be questionable, he gets carried away in his devotion to...."

Gan poked at the inside of the mug with his finger. The hot chocolate was finished, but there was a bit stuck to the mug. He licked his finger. Now, what was I talking about? he wondered. Sheeya, I sounded just like Uncle Wythfryd when he has a really big bug up his butt.

Gan hunched his shoulders inward, slid down on the chair until his pelvis was precariously balanced on the edge of the chair, and spread his legs wide, his toes turned inward. Outside, the garbage trucks clanked and squealed past. The sound reminded Gan of home. "Man," he said, his voice wobbling with nostalgia. "I gotta get a band together!" This is a good day, he thought. Chockie, a cute girl, no pursuit ships...what's a pursuit ship?

(Chez Chase)

Cordelia parked her car, unlocked the door of the empty house, and went up to her room to check her e-mail. Her mother wasn't home; neither was Guadelupe, the housekeeper.

Before she could settle in to enjoy the peace and quiet, Cordelia noticed that her closet door was open...and her very newest outfit was missing, and its garment bag lay open and gutted on the closet floor. She knew Guadelupe wouldn't have the nerve to borrow the Narciso Rodriguez, and it was obviously new and didn't need to be cleaned. That left only one viable explanation. Damn! she thought. If Mom's wearing it, not only is she going to look ridiculous--there ought to be an age limit on borrowing clothes!--but she's gonna stretch it out right in the tummy.

(Come As You Are Couture)

According to Orac, Ethan Rayne operated as Lurconis' local agent for the service of process. According to the directory published by the Chamber of Commerce, Ethan Rayne was the owner of CAYA Couture, and according to a touch-screen kiosk in the center of downtown Sunnydale, CAYA Couture was...right over there.

Avon rapped the knocker--a replica of a Blake-watercolor serpent twisted into a pretzel--against the center of the paneled oak door surmounted with a stained glass half-round. The door was opened by a thin man in his forties. The discontent on his sharp features smoothed a little as he appraised the visitor--concentrating, perhaps surprisingly, on the crackling paper wrappings bunched up in his hand.

"Have you a wastebasket?" Avon asked, conscious that it was a n unusual, and perhaps excessively curt, introduction. He dropped the wrappers from the chocolate bars into the elephant's foot indicated by Ethan Rayne's chin. He felt...peculiar, once again shy and defiant, simultaneously expressing "What are you looking at?" and "Oh, don't you wish you could see the rest." His shoulders moved backward but downward, the arch in his back reverted to a slump, and he threw his head backward to get the nostril-length bangs out of his eyes even though they weren't there any more. "Ah. Yes. Are you Ethan Rayne?"

Ethan nodded.

"And can you facilitate a meeting with the Demon Lurconis? We have something to say of advantage to it...him?" Avon tried very hard to remember what it was-or was going to be, but the only thing he could think of was the Physics prep sitting unfinished at home. He couldn't imagine where he was, or how he got there, and thus determined to bluff it out.

"That's quite an outfit," Avon said.

"One of the benefits of self-employment," Ethan said, gesturing at the magnificent kimono, brocaded and embroidered in peonies and chrysanthemums, although he had conceded to local mores enough to wear a pair of drainpipe-tight black 501s underneath. "Another one is the convenience of commutation. I live over the shop."

Avon followed Ethan up a short flight of stairs. After opening the front door, Ethan reached into his pocket and drew out a small silver case. Inside, beneath the mirrored lid (still a trifle dusty), was a line of cigarettes. "Do you smoke?" After all he thought, It's more than an hour until The Gathering is scheduled, and the fucking things are worse than West End musicals for starting on time, and it won't take long to get there--just count off three hundred yards and pop down into the sewer.

"Ta," Avon said, taking one, then rotated the cigarette beneath the nearest quasi-Tiffany lamp. "These are hand-rolled."

"What a suspicious child it is," Ethan said. "They're fully ninety percent tobacco."

"And the other ten percent?"

"Opiated hashish," Ethan said, his Zippo lighter already at half-mast.

Two competing decades of Avon struggled, but the one controlling the body bent forward for a light.

(A Downtown Street)

Just before the beginning of his shift, Officer Stan Feldwyck, Sunnydale's newest, youngest, and shortest sworn police officer drove his cruiser past the Dunkin' Donuts. There was a sign: "Closed: Death in the Family. Back Tomorrow."

Goldang! Feldwyck thought. I'm supposed to bring the doughnuts. It's part of our experience of bonding into a cohesive unit. Then he cheered up. His kid sister, Rosie, was in the band, and he had ten bars of band candy in his locker back at the station. The guys would like that--it would be a nice change from doughnuts, and encouraging school spirit was almost as good as bonding the Night Watch.

(Over the Shop, at CAYA Couture)

"I've come from the Second Calendar--the thirtieth century, in your reckoning," Avon said, grateful for returning lucidity but thinking that it sounded unconvincing even to him. He gazed around the room raptly: the elaborate moldings were exquisite, the William Morris wallpaper a symphony in sage green and grey-blue with tiny accents of red berries, and he hoped that the huge Benares brass vase full of peacock feathers was conceived in an ironic spirit.

"That must be exciting," Ethan said.

"Not particularly," Avon said. "We're-my colleagues and I-are here to liaise with the demon Lurconis. We have reason to believe that you can help us in this matter."

"Why?"

"I've been told he's a sort of Renaissance demon...a poly-Titian? An Infernal back-bencher, and who among us doesn't like to get back-benched?" and then he said, "Oh!" as his knees buckled and a Japanese-print wave of heat and pure delight swept through him, even washing away his appreciation of his own jokes.

"Better lie down before you fall down," Ethan said, gesturing toward a pile of cushions spread out before the hearth. He snapped his fingers, and the gas log crackled to life. (It was the "Inferno" model, with the leaping red flames.) He opened the center drawer of his desk, slipped a pair of handcuffs into one of the front pockets of the jeans (it was a tight fit) and made sure that the keys were securely...in the desk drawer.

Avon had arranged the cushions decoratively, and himself over them more decoratively still.

"Strip off," Ethan said.

Avon lifted his head a little-he was still fully dressed, except for his boots and socks. He sprawled supine, right foot flat on the floor, his left leg crossed over the right, the toes pointed as if he were about to embark on a Martha Graham solo. "Wouldn't you rather do it?"

Ethan lay down next to him, and Avon slipped his hand inside the kimono-his eyes widening when he encountered the nipple ring-and stroked downwards. He stopped to extract the handcuffs from Ethan's pocket, and throw them across the room, fortunately missing the Ming vase.

And then for a while there was nothing but the sighing of breath and fabric, and the slide of skin against skin (here and there, the cool kiss of metal on skin) and the glow of artificial firelight.

(1630 Revello Drive)

Joyce shifted impatiently in her chair. What was the point of having a guy interested in you--and a new guy from out of town, too--if no one could see you together?

"For sure, Sunnydale is a crappy little town," Joyce said, "But there's one cool place. C'mon, let's go to The Bronze."  
Gan stood up to pull back Joyce's chair. Joyce slung her handbag over her shoulder, pouted momentarily about her Mom not letting her drive, and knew there was something wrong about that but didn't know what.

Joyce looked over at Gan. He didn't seem to have a jacket or sweater with him, so she couldn't see if he was a letterman. He was big enough for that, anyway.

(Sunnydale High Library)

Willow and Blake walked into the library at more or less the same time, and looked each other up and down. Grownup. she thought. Kinda-sorta funny clothes. Out during the day, so I guess not a vamp unless he checked his suit of armor. Wouldn't fit into one of the lockers though.

She has a sweet face, Blake thought. I hope the Slayer and her gang haven't imposed upon her too much. "I'm here to find Lurconis," Blake said heartily.

"Oh," Willow said sadly. "Well, we don't know where he is yet, but we're workin' on it. 'Smatter of fact that's why I'm here. Classes over, get on the computer, you know." She sat down at one of the long wooden tables and flipped open the cover of some sort of portfolio she had been carrying under her arm.

Pull the other one, it's got bells on it! Blake thought. Oh, well, I suppose if a total stranger appeared out of nowhere in my Universe, I'd try to fob him or her off with an absurd fiction as well ,Blake thought. But I'd try to make it a bit more convincing! I may not be the second-greatest expert in the entire Federation, but I've seen computers, and that thing isn't even an eighth of the size of Orac, much less the size of a proper computer.

More the merrier, Willow thought. No knocks on the home team-the Chicago Cubs we ain't-but out of town demon-fighters, why not?

I don't know what the poor girl's business is with Lurconis, Blake thought, and I hope she gets it. But if he can only answer one petition, well, it had better be mine-ours. No two ways about it.

Blake looked up as another adult entered the room. "Hullo," Giles said. "Pardon me, may I ask who you are and what you're doing here?"

Blake relaxed at the sound of the cultivated voice. "My name is Blake, and I'm here-my companions and myself-to find Lurconis. Apparently this young woman is aware of him as well."

"Ah," Giles said. "Your companions-do they manifest in the visible world?" At least the Council-or Whomever-sent another Englishman. Hope he's more use than that plonker Wyndam-Price.

"What? Oh, yes, of course they do. They're off pursuing other lines of inquiries. One of them is-keeping an eye on Ms. Summers, and the other one is attempting to make contact with a fellow named Ethan Rayne."  
Giles flinched. "Good Christ, I thought I'd seen him off once and for all. How did your associate know where to find him?"

"A woman named Larissa showed him the City Directory. He's been there for an awfully long time," Blake said. "I hope nothing's gone wrong."

"Is your colleague good-looking?" Giles asked.

"Fuck, yes."

Giles crossed to the book locker and took his Burberry off the hook.

"Do you know what happened to him?" Blake asked.

"Not as such," Giles said, his head inside the safe, removing something that wasn't in the least a candy bar. "More of a worst-case scenario."

(The Sunnydale Enterprise District)

Although it was still early, most of the downtown shopkeepers had succumbed to second-adolescence, or just a perception of general weirdness, and had jacked it in for the day, Joyce and Olag (they were now on first-name terms, and indeed walked hand in hand) reached the business district.

"Darn--damn!" Joyce said daringly. "It's getting chilly! Shoulda brought a sweater or something." Even if they had been open, Joyce was sure that her allowance would have been long gone.

Gan looked at the shop fronts. Most of them were solidly covered with metal grates, but there were a few sparkling shop windows.

One of them was a vintage clothing store. The window contained a headless mannequin (with a huge befeathered straw hat on the stump of its neck) draped in a long knitted coat. Mercifully, some of its pattern of narrow aqua, lavender, bone, and lime chevrons was concealed by the drifts of marabou running down the front and edging the hood.

Joyce's eyes grew big and round with longing.

Well, I know the Limiter will fire if I try to harm a person, Gan thought. What'd happen if I just smashed that window to buggery? And what's a Limiter? Aw, what the stonf, even if my brains get blown out through my nose, it'd be worth it to make Jo-Jo happy. He picked up a trash can and hurled it through the window, considerately standing between Joyce and the possible spray of broken glass.

There was no response from his Limiter. He bounded over to the smashed shop window and threw the coat and hat to Joyce. Hehehe! he thought. I said 'stonf'!  
There was a really cool black leather jacket in the window, too. Gan could tell it was pointless trying to put it on, but he tied the sleeves around his neck, as a trophy.

Just then, Officer Feldwyck, cruising slowly through the business district, drove up. At this palpable breach of public order, he climbed out of the car, service arm at the ready.

"Ooooh!" Gan crooned. "Copper's got a gun!"

(Ethan's Parlor)

There was a crash followed by a lot of splintering, and then a man came through the door with a gun.

"Late as usual, Ripper," Ethan said.

"I'm never...." Giles started to say, then stopped talking, willing himself not to be drawn back into the game.

Avon shook his head to clear it, and glanced cheerfully at Ethan for an explanation. The gun seemed to be trained on Ethan, so he wasn't particularly worried.

Ethan stood up, closed his kimono, and started retrieving Avon's clothes with a view to throwing them at him.

"Fuck off!" Giles said, chording with "Sod off!" from Ethan, just going to show who was more acclimated than whom.

Avon thought that, under the circumstances, he owed at least some sort of show of allegiance to Ethan, but he responded to the unanimous verdict, especially in that it was read out by an armed jury foreman.

"I should try the high school library if I were you," Giles said. "You've been inquired after. Although in tones that suggest that perhaps I should avoid the high school library if I were you. Or that I'm glad I'm not."

(Halfway Between Shop Window and Trash Can)

Joyce stood with her hand pressed against her mouth. She didn't want anyone to get hurt, but she didn't know what to do to prevent it. And it was kind of exciting.

Gan picked up Officer Feldwyck bodily, deposited him in another trash can (it was a tight fit), and put Feldwyck's gun into his pocket as a further trophy. He unclipped the handcuffs from Feldwyck's belt and slung them around Joyce's neck.

"Let's blow this popsicle stand," he said. "What was that place you told me about?"

They resumed their interrupted journey to The Bronze.

(Baby, the Rayne Must Fall)

The door slammed, and a few more bits fell out, in the wake of Avon's departure.

"That was a sixteen-year old boy!--or thinks he is," Giles said, his indignation subsiding a little.

"That was a sixteen-year-old tart who thinks everyone on the planet wants his smooth little body and doesn't mind letting them as long as he can make them pay out by weight. A right little raver, just like you were. Save your sympathy for someone who deserves it."

And for a moment, with nostalgia and embarrassment and retrospective pity for himself (and envy for the hair that not only ran down to the shoulders but up--as it seemed now--to the eyebrows) Giles could see his younger self. He had a scholar's gown and a pair of American trainers with a star on each instep. Looking back, he winced at the equal measure of pride he had taken in each.

Giles raised the gun again.

(Maternity Ward, Sunnydale General Hospital)

It was almost time for the shift change, so there were twice as many nurses as usual in the hospital. As if they heard a signal summoning them, the outgoing shift of nurses stopped the natural and normal everyday task of nurses everywhere--writing things in very big looseleaf books that no one will ever read--and joined the long column of nurses shuffling toward the nursery.

At first, each nurse picked up an infant from a crib and shuffled out toward the exit. But there were more nurses than infants, so there were a few brief spats, settled by two nurses each clutching two limbs, or four nurses each clutching one.

They shuffled again into a ragged column, and stumbled unseeing down the stairs, to the basement, where the leader draped a baby over her shoulder long enough to throw the bolt on the thick metal door giving access to the sewer system.

(Ethan's Place)

Ethan shoved the barrel of the gun into Giles' mouth--if he'd had the choice of weapon he would have used a revolver, so much more satisfying, but the automatic was all that he had.

"Now beg me for mercy," he said. "Oh, no, wait, you can't. Dommage."

He thumbed back the safety. {{As we both did, the night we met.}}

Giles' eyes remained open, blazing defiance.

Ethan pulled the trigger.  
(After the Worry, and the Noise and the Hurry, It'll Help, I Know...Downtown)

Buffy hurried through the teeming, chaotic streets. Here and there, a siren howled, and people one by one, in couples, and in packs swarmed from streetlamp to the friendlier dark.

Sometimes she shone a pencil flashlight, but so far every face she saw was human. Where's all the vamps and demons? This should be playtime. Soup's on but nobody's got a spoon. she thought.

A cop car was in statis at right angles to the road, obviously stalled where it had spun out. As she drew closer, Buffy could see the car bounce down and then back a few inches at a time. She saw a man's broad back, and tensed. Oh, good, let it be a rapist, she thought. Not a vamp. I'll just kick his balls up between his ears and get outta here before they can even thank that Masked Girl.

However, a second later, it became clear that she was about to become a voyeur, not a rescuer, as a giggle floated up. "You're just like a stevedore," someone said out of sight behind the mass of the man's body. The speaker obviously had no complaint about the situation. Well, she nearly out of sight--one of her feet was visible, caressing the man's back.

Buffy moved away, relieved. What's a stevedore? she wondered, and then Hey, that girl has the same Jimmy Choos as me. Wonder where she got them?

(Meanwhile, back at the Raynche)

Giles took advantage of the nothing-much happening to push his head back (not very successful, given the pile of cushions right behind him) and to push Ethan's wrist away (which worked well enough for Giles to be able to pull the gun out of his mouth and then toss it across the room--not in the same corner as the handcuffs, however). He wiped his mouth.

"I-I didn't p-put in the clip, you ponce," he said. People can get hurt that way. He tried to sit up, but was engulfed in a renewed struggle that ended up with Giles supine again, his wrists pinned over his head, which was....interesting...in connection with (up against, as it were) an opponent clad only in some of a kimono.

"I know you didn't, I could feel it, hardly the first time I've had a gun in my hand, is it, Ripper? Bloody tosser. You still stutter when you're nervous."

"I should hardly c-call this the most anodyne situation."

"Sometimes just getting out 'Fffffffuck me' took longer than the entire second half of Norma," Ethan said.

"Well, it's not the most c-Casta thing a d-Diva can say, is it? And anyway Ripper's....gone," Giles said.

"You wanted to say 'dead,' eh? But you wouldn't have the stones to kill him. You think you've got him chained up--ah, that got your attention--so far down a salt mine that it makes the fucking Chateau d'If look the like Dorothy Chandler Pavilion on Oscar night. And that's why you think you hate me."

"I do hate you, Ethan. Because you're an embarrassment, not merely to the entire human race but to me personally."

"You hate me because I'm not proper and joyless the way you think a good subject of Queen Victoria should be. Especially in front of the bloody colonials. You don't want to remember that I could have anyone--even you. And I did, I rode you until your eyes rolled up and your knees buckled and you popped like warm champagne and begged me to hurt you a little bit more. And now you're back--between heroic and jealous, I'd vote for the latter--and you're flat on your back again. And you're trembling because you know that I can make you want me again. More than ever."

"That's impossible," Giles said.

With the inimitable crassness that was no much a part of him, Ethan jammed his knee further between Giles' legs, nudged, and raised an eyebrow.

"Because I never stopped."

"Oh, Rupert! That's rather poetic. In a maudlin sort of way."

And, rather later, Giles, in the absence of detailed knowledge, merely assumed that The Gathering was underway, in the absence of at least one moderately important participant. How terribly Nosferatu of me, he thought.

(The Sewers)

All was in readiness for the sacrifice: the zombified congregation, the wailing infantine canapés. However, unlike Studio 54, the Sunnydale sewer system failed to maintain an adequate door policy, and two parties very much not on the A-List arrived more or less simultaneously.

"We didn't miss him, did we, Will?" Buffy asked anxiously.

"From what the texts say, he'd be hard to miss," Willow said. "Hard to kill, but easy to miss."

"Kill?" Blake said. "Why do you want to kill Lurconis?"

"Well, Mister, whoever you are..."

"He was in the library," Willow said.

"Yeah, like that constitutes a background check. I'm gonna kill him first because we have a zero-tolerance policy around here for demons-well, evil demons, anyway-and also because if I don't he's gonna eat all those babies and then make our Mayor immortal. And we just had Term Limits in Civics class."  
"Hang about-you mean to say that Lurconis is going to eat those babies?"

"Do the math," Willow said. "This is a sewer. Why would anybody bring babies down here-to hang 'em up like a little pine tree to make your taxicab smell bad?"

"Avon!" Blake shouted. "Get those babies to safety!" This was the first speech to pass between them since Avon had turned up at the high school library, looking dreamy, unfocused, and as comprehensively nibbled as a carton of chocolate eggs and marshmallow chicks on Easter Monday.

These particular babies fell far below Avon's optimum standards for infantile moisture and noise level (can you say "Damien Hirst"?) but even he was compelled to admit that the situation was urgent enough to be argued about only later. He wondered briefly if you could stack babies up your arms like plates at a posh restaurant, decided not to risk it, and grabbed one baby under each arm, dashed up to the nearest branch in the sewer system, and dropped them. He continued shuttling between the improvised altar and the equally improvised baby depot until one was empty, the other full.

Willow's contribution was first to lead the nurses in mystic chanting (yesterday's homework from second-semester Russian) and then to lead them away from the Place of Sacrifice, just out of sight where Xander waited to clock them, one by one, over the head with a moderate-sized rock.

Through the cloven cobblestones of the floor, Lurconis appeared in serpent form, twisting and snorting fire. Buffy launched herself at his lowest coils. Picking herself up from what she was wearily aware would be just one of many instances of being flung through the air and dumped on her ass, she poised for another spring. To her pleasant surprise, Blake was whaling away at Lurconis. Old guys are cool she thought. At least if they know how to fight. Wish Giles was here, though.

I don't suppose my handgun will kill this thing, Blake thought, But perhaps it will confuse its judgment enough for that young woman to do something with that very efficient-looking axe she seems to have brought with her.

Dunno what kind of party he was expecting that he brought a sex toy Buffy thought, But SnakeBoy doesn't like it at all. Then Buffy spotted the gas line running along the wall. She pulled it away from the wall and snapped it, easily as if it had been an orange stick, and turned it toward Lurconis. A few brief blasts from Blake's Liberator gun turned it into a flaming torch, and after a moment of flaming agony, the demon was consumed utterly.

Willow, Xander and Avon trooped in just in time to see the ashes hiss for the last time. "Ready to go up?" Avon asked Blake.

"Let's not forget Gan, shall we?"

Avon clicked on his bracelet. "Gan...come in...are you all right?"  
"Never better," Gan said. "I'm at a place called The Bronze...well, apparently everyone is. It's awfully lively. But I'm afraid I didn't find, well, You Know Who."

Blake clicked on his own bracelet. "That's all right."

"Ah, Blake how did it go?"

"Change of plans," Blake said.

"Did you find Lur..."

"Not on an open line," Blake said coldly. "We'll discuss it later."

(The Bronze)

"Gotta go home, Jo-Jo," Gan said, breathless with dancing, when he saw the procession of conquerors.

Joyce wiped a tear from her eye, limped forward (one of the heels on the Choos was broken) and threw her arms around Gan to bid him a hero's farewell. "Oh, Olag! You were....back there...you were neat," she said. Gan hung his head modestly.

Buffy, transfixed with horror, stared at the wounded shoe. "Mom!" she cried. "Never tell me!"

Blake held up one hand to deter the provision of an explanation. Gan shrugged, looked down, and grinned at the floor.

Joyce took off her--or, rather, Buffy's--shoes and put one in each pocket of the sweater-coat.

Blake realized that he still had some contemporary money in his pocket, so he fought his way to the bar and got the drinks in. He took a long pull on his bottle of Corona.

"We violate the integrity of the fabric of space-time, and for nothing but another one of our patented fiascos," Avon said. "This isn't a bad cappuccino. As usual, we put our necks on the block to do something, and all that happens is that we have to undo it."

"Avon," Blake said wearily, "Did you want the demon to devour those babies just so you wouldn't feel you'd wasted the trip?"

"No, of course not."

"And do you want to tell me what you were doing all that time you were gone?"

"No, of course not."

"In that case, shut your gob and keep it shut," Blake said. "Orac, chronoport....then."

**Author's Note:**

> A cover version of "Band Candy," now...with added space rebels! Originally published in my Buffy/Blakes7 zine, "Blake the Federation Slayer." The cover showed Blake's tombstone, with the epitaph, "He fought the Federation. A Lot."


End file.
